1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control device, a print control method and a program for controlling a printing device to make the printing device print an image corresponding to specified data on a sheet when data as the target of printing is specified.
2. Related Art
In well-known methods for making a printing device (e.g. printer) print user data which has been created by a user by use of an information processing device, the user data is converted into print image data (as image data for printing) using a printer driver corresponding to the printing device, and the print image data obtained by the conversion is supplied to the printing device to make the printing device print an image corresponding to the print image data on a sheet (paper, transparent sheet, etc.). As examples of such print image data, image data describing image information in a page description language (PDL), raster image data, etc. are widely known.
Meanwhile, there exists a printing technique of automatically printing the current date/time on the sheet during the process for printing user data and thereby recording the date/time of the printed document on the sheet, as described in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. HEI 05-138997 (hereinafter, referred to as '997 publication).
However, with the progress of office networking in recent years, each printing device is likely to be shared by a plurality of users, and the following problems are arising under such circumstances.
First, when a printing device is shared by two or more users, a printed document (printout) ejected to the output tray of the printing device can be left in the tray for a long time when the user has forgotten to pick up the printed document, for example, and other users not needing the document can be troubled by the document left in the tray.
Specifically, when such a neglected document (sheet) exists in the output tray, documents printed thereafter are stacked on the neglected document. In such cases, each user has to select and pick up his/her own document (sheet) from the stack in the tray.
Second, even when a printed document is left in the output tray for a long time, it is sometimes difficult for other users noticing such a neglected document to take out the document from the tray and discard it, considering that the person needing the document can appear in a while to pick up the document.
As above, when printed documents (printouts) are left in the output tray of a printing device, other users not needing the documents can suffer inconvenience for a long time in picking up their own printed documents from the tray.
Even if the date/time of printing is printed on the sheet as suggested in '997 publication, users other than one who attended to print the document which has been left on the output tray cannot judge whether the document can be discarded.